Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskell's "historical futurism" needs better writing, not better tools
Switching subtopics to the "Chirality" section, ...
I take Ben's point (with which I agree) to be that "Chirality" is an even more obscure word than "Endomorphism". (Except perhaps in the realm of subatomic particle physics.) Grokking this material is hard enough without having to reach for a dictionary. If you mean 'left-biased' vs 'right-biased', or 'from-front' vs 'from-rear' or 'Cons-oriented' vs 'Snoc-oriented', say that. (And I'll be interested to see how anyone explains this without `fromList` jigging their elbow.) Now I can see Foldable structures are abstract, not spatial. But Cons is recursive on its (textually) right operand, whereas `Bin` or `Node` are symmetric between their (textually) left/right recursive operands. I guessed that's what the Chirality section was talking about, so I skimmed the first sentence and skipped on.
On Fri, Oct 01, 2021 at 08:27:15PM +1300, Anthony Clayden wrote:
Switching subtopics to the "Chirality" section, ...
I take Ben's point (with which I agree) to be that "Chirality" is an even more obscure word than "Endomorphism". (Except perhaps in the realm of subatomic particle physics.)
The word occurred only in the section title, which will now (MR 6555) read: Expectation of efficient left-to-right iteration
Grokking this material is hard enough without having to reach for a dictionary. If you mean 'left-biased' vs 'right-biased', or 'from-front' vs 'from-rear' or 'Cons-oriented' vs 'Snoc-oriented', say that. (And I'll be interested to see how anyone explains this without `fromList` jigging their elbow.)
Yes, of course.
Now I can see Foldable structures are abstract, not spatial. But Cons is recursive on its (textually) right operand, whereas `Bin` or `Node` are symmetric between their (textually) left/right recursive operands. I guessed that's what the Chirality section was talking about, so I skimmed the first sentence and skipped on.
Skipping material a reader feels they already know is fine, it is there for those who might need it, or just as a signal that, yes, I know that you know ... that some structures like to be more difficult than others. -- Viktor.
On Fri, 1 Oct 2021, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
On Fri, Oct 01, 2021 at 08:27:15PM +1300, Anthony Clayden wrote:
Switching subtopics to the "Chirality" section, ...
I take Ben's point (with which I agree) to be that "Chirality" is an even more obscure word than "Endomorphism". (Except perhaps in the realm of subatomic particle physics.)
The word occurred only in the section title, which will now (MR 6555) read:
Expectation of efficient left-to-right iteration
It seems that the thread has shifted from "historical futurism" to "documentation of Foldable".
participants (3)
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Anthony Clayden -
Henning Thielemann -
Viktor Dukhovni